Wednesday, May 21, 2008

For Shame, Dick Wolf

Earlier this year, I was ready to give up on the new cast of Law & Order, I honestly was. You guys know what a big decision that is for me. That show is my bread and butter. But the new season was leaving a bad taste in my mouth. Sam Waterston wasn't getting enough airtime. Newcomer detective Cyrus Lupo has a name like a soap opera villain. The Medical Examiner has done something ridiculous with her hair color. The new braggadocio A.D.A. (played by Linus Roache -- another soap opera name) just seems like a Waterston ripoff.

Then I lost my job and my television-watching time quadrupled and I ran out of TV shows. Now I find myself clinging to the new cast like the floating door at the end of Titanic. It’s like when you’re about to break up with someone and then you get some bad news about something else and you chicken out, saying to yourself, “I can’t believe I was going to break up with him! I don’t know what I’d do without him! What was I thinking?”

But I’m not so blinded by love that I can’t admit that tonight’s season finale was incredibly disappointing. It was the dramatization of the Eliot Spitzer hooker scandal yet somehow it was completely unriveting. I was confused by the plot line where the guy was thrown into the incinerator, but admittedly I wasn’t paying that much attention. I was still contemplating that McDonald’s commercial, wondering where they got the idea that southerners eat chicken biscuits for breakfast. Anyway. They didn’t even get to the governor till almost 40 minutes in, then they made Silda out to be a co-conspirator! Silda! That was cheap, L&O. Cheap!

P.S. I've said it once and I'll say it again, though: Sam Waterston is still hot. I don't care how old he is. As the kids say, I’d let him get it.